Stefanos Tsitsipas lifted the lid on his early exit in Toronto, admitting it took him a while to re-adjust to his normal sleeping pattern after leaving Los Cabos.
Tsitsipas began this year's summer hard-court swing a little earlier than expected, traveling to Western Mexico to headline the ATP 250 event in Los Cabos as the tournament's top seed. Although his decision to play there was vindicated as the Greek went on to win his first title of the season in style.
But the title hangover soon engulfed him as Tsitsipas traveled to Toronto shortly after that success to play the first of the Masters 1000 doubleheader before the US Open. Unfortunately for Tsitsipas, even with a Wednesday start at the Canadian Open, he was clearly heavy-legged and the effects of jetlag appeared to have affected his performance.
Speaking to the media after his second-round win over Ben Shelton at the Cincinnati Masters, Tsitsipas explained what went wrong this past week, admitting that playing in Los Cabos had detrimental implications to his sleeping pattern. Matches in that tournament started at 6 pm local time, and would almost always feature late-night finished past 3 am.
"It was difficult. I mean, that was my decision to go to Los Cabos, but it was difficult to transition, especially the tournament that I had to play after Los Cabos. The time difference made it very difficult for me to adjust in terms of my sleep. I had to play my match quite exhausted."
"But, yeah, the transition has been better after Toronto. I'm able to finally go to bed at normal times as opposed to Los Cabos where we would finish at 3:00 a.m. -- a.m., right? Yeah, a.m. Every day for a week, which is quite unusual for a tennis man."
Tsitsipas had no complaints though and added that conditions also played a decisive part in his loss to Gael Monfils in Canada. Humid conditions in Los Cabos gave the Greek a lot more time in his ground game and masked his weakness on the backhand against power-hitting players. But the ball, he says, felt different in Toronto.
"But this is our tour. This is how things work. I couldn't really acclimatize fast to these new conditions. The ball felt different in Toronto than it did in Los Cabos. Los Cabos, quite frankly, was a much more humid, hot place than Toronto where the ball felt much more lively there."
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